Baker Family Residence, Smithfield

Location and Setting

Smithfield occupies the northern reaches of Adelaide's metropolitan sprawl, positioned roughly twenty-five kilometres from the city centre in the local government area of Playford. The suburb developed primarily during the 1960s and 1970s as affordable housing for working-class and lower-middle-class families, its character shaped by the practical aspirations of people establishing themselves without pretension or substantial inherited wealth. Streets follow the grid patterns typical of planned suburban development, lined with modest brick homes on quarter-acre blocks, most featuring front lawns, rear gardens, and the ubiquitous Hills Hoist clotheslines that once defined Australian domesticity.

The Baker residence sits within this unremarkable landscape, distinguished from its neighbours primarily by the particulars of maintenance and personal taste rather than by architectural ambition. The surrounding streets house families of similar composition and circumstance—tradespeople, public servants, small business owners, retirees who purchased when prices permitted and stayed as values climbed beyond their children's reach. Churches of various denominations serve the community, including the Playford Ward meetinghouse where the Bakers worshipped throughout their Smithfield years.

The suburb's character suited Jonathan and Evelyn's values and circumstances when they purchased in 1991. Young married couples with limited resources but substantial ambitions could acquire homes here, establish families, and build lives without the financial pressure that characterised Adelaide's more desirable suburbs. The northern location provided reasonable access to Jonathan's various workplace locations over his environmental engineering career, whilst Evelyn's church responsibilities took her throughout the broader Playford area regardless of residential positioning.

The House Itself

The Baker home exemplifies the brick veneer construction that dominated South Australian residential development during the latter twentieth century. A single-storey dwelling of perhaps one hundred and fifty square metres under roof, it features the practical layout that Australian families of moderate means have inhabited for generations: living areas toward the front, bedrooms along a central corridor, kitchen and wet areas at the rear. The original configuration included three bedrooms—adequate for a young couple anticipating children, increasingly inadequate as that anticipation materialised beyond initial expectations.

Jonathan's practical skills and environmental sensibilities manifested in gradual modifications over the years. He enclosed a rear verandah to create additional living space, converted the garage to a combination workshop and fourth bedroom when the children's numbers exceeded the house's designed capacity, and installed solar panels during the early 2000s when such technology remained unusual in suburban homes. These improvements reflected both necessity and conviction: the household genuinely needed more space, but Jonathan also believed in demonstrating that sustainable practices belonged in ordinary homes, not merely in showcase developments.

The property's rear garden evolved according to Evelyn's sensibilities, with established fruit trees providing both shade and produce, vegetable beds that contributed to family meals, and the flower borders she maintained as personal creative expression amid the consuming demands of large-family management. A lemon tree planted during their first year of ownership had grown substantial by 2018, its annual yield exceeding what any single household could consume and thus becoming currency for neighbourhood generosity and Relief Society distribution.

Interior spaces bore the marks of family life accumulated over decades. The living room carpet showed wear patterns tracing the paths most frequently walked. Kitchen cabinets had been repainted multiple times as fashions and damage accumulated. Children's height markers on a doorframe documented growth from Amelia's first standing measurement through Chloe's final record before the household disbanded. These were not features anyone had designed; they emerged from use, from the simple fact that seven children and two parents had occupied this space for sufficient years to leave permanent traces.

Establishment and Early Years

Jonathan Edward Baker and Evelyn Margaret Dawson married in the Adelaide Australia Temple on 15 March 1991, she at twenty-two and he at twenty-four. Both came from established Latter-day Saint families—Jonathan the son of a carpenter father and homemaker mother, Evelyn the fourth of six children in a family distinguished by education and church leadership. Their courtship had followed patterns familiar to their community: meeting through church activities, progressing through approved stages of dating and engagement, sealing their marriage with temple ordinances that promised eternal rather than merely temporal union.

The Smithfield house represented their first joint ownership, purchased with assistance from both families and considerable financial stretching. The property needed work—cosmetic updates, some structural attention, the accumulated deferred maintenance of previous owners—but it was theirs, a foundation upon which to build the family both anticipated. Jonathan's carpentry heritage and practical education meant he could address many improvements personally, transforming weekend hours into gradual transformation of their domestic space.

Amelia's arrival in May 1993 initiated the household's transition from couple to family, a shift that would accelerate over the following eight years as six more children arrived in relatively rapid succession. The house that had seemed adequate for two adults and an infant grew progressively more cramped as Benjamin came in 1994, Nathaniel in 1996, Samuel in 1997, Rebecca in 1998, Lydia in 2000, and finally Chloe in 2001. By the time the youngest was born, the residence accommodated nine people in space designed for perhaps five, creativity and tolerance substituting for square footage.

The decision to remain in Smithfield rather than seeking larger accommodation reflected both practical constraints and deliberate values. Moving to a bigger house would have required either significant debt or relocation to areas even further from Adelaide's employment centres. Jonathan and Evelyn chose instead to adapt their existing space, teaching children to share bedrooms, to respect others' minimal privacy, to function as a unit rather than as individuals requiring separate territories. This approach carried costs—the older children, particularly, sometimes chafed at arrangements that limited their autonomy—but it also forged the close family identity that would later prove essential during crisis.

Daily Life and Household Rhythms

The Baker household operated according to systems that Evelyn developed through necessity and refined through experience. Feeding nine people required planning that extended weeks ahead: meal schedules coordinated with shopping trips, bulk cooking sessions that produced freezable portions, assignment of kitchen duties that rotated among children old enough to contribute. Laundry for nine generated continuous cycles of washing, drying, and folding that became background rhythm rather than discrete task. Homework supervision required scheduling that distributed parental attention across children at different educational stages with competing needs.

Mornings began early, particularly during school terms when seven children required preparation for departure at various times. Evelyn's alarm preceded the household's general awakening by an hour, time she used for personal scripture study and prayer before the demands of the day made contemplation impossible. Jonathan rose next, his routine including family devotions that gathered everyone for brief readings and prayer before breakfast. These morning observances provided spiritual anchoring amidst the chaos, though children of various ages engaged with varying levels of attention and enthusiasm.

The older children—Amelia primarily, with Benjamin's assistance—bore responsibility that exceeded typical expectations for their ages. They supervised younger siblings, managed homework completion, maintained order during parents' necessary absences. This arrangement served household function whilst extracting costs from children whose personal needs sometimes went unattended whilst they attended to others'. Amelia in particular absorbed responsibility that shaped her character in ways both admirable and limiting, developing competence at the expense of autonomy she might otherwise have explored.

Jonathan's work as an environmental engineer kept him away from home during standard business hours, his contributions to household management concentrated in evenings and weekends. His workshop time on Saturday mornings became a valued space for connection with children who wanted to learn practical skills, the smell of sawdust and the rhythm of hand tools creating memories that would persist long after the household dissolved. He was present without being central to daily management, a pattern common to households of their generation and faith community that he sometimes recognised as limitation without knowing how to transcend it.

Evelyn's church responsibilities expanded throughout their Smithfield years, culminating in her 2010 calling as Relief Society President of Playford Ward. This position—overseeing the women's organisation for their congregation—demanded substantial time and emotional energy, home visits to struggling sisters, coordination of service efforts, the constant navigation of personalities and needs that such leadership requires. The household absorbed these demands because it had no choice, children adjusting their expectations of maternal availability to accommodate what their mother's faith required of her.

Faith in Domestic Space

The Baker residence functioned as sacred space in ways that transcended its ordinary suburban architecture. For Jonathan and Evelyn, home was where covenant keeping manifested in daily practice—where family prayer happened twice daily, where scripture study occurred before homework, where children learned through immersion that religious life was not Sunday performance but continuous orientation. This understanding shaped how they maintained their home, the images displayed on walls, the music permitted within its bounds, the conversations held around its dinner table.

Family home evenings, held Monday nights according to LDS practice, transformed the living room into classroom and chapel combined. Jonathan or Evelyn would prepare lessons drawing from scripture and church materials, adapting content for an audience ranging from teenagers to toddlers. Children participated in prayers, songs, and discussions with varying levels of engagement; the ritual mattered regardless of individual enthusiasm, establishing patterns that would persist in memory even when belief itself became complicated.

The house also served as venue for Evelyn's considerable ministering efforts. Her book circle met monthly around the dining table, Relief Society sisters gathering to discuss approved literature whilst building the relationships that sustained community life. Individual sisters came for counsel, sitting in the living room whilst Evelyn listened and prayed alongside women navigating difficulties that ranged from marital tension to financial crisis to crises of faith. These meetings made the Baker home a hub of feminine spiritual community, its spaces absorbing conversations that required confidentiality and care.

Jonathan's faith expressed itself differently—less in formal teaching than in consistent example, less in verbal testimony than in reliable presence. His workshop became a space for the kind of mentoring that occurs alongside shared activity, conversations about values emerging naturally whilst hands worked on projects. Several young men from the ward spent time in that workshop over the years, learning practical skills whilst absorbing, perhaps unconsciously, Jonathan's integration of faith with physical labour and environmental responsibility.

The home's function as sacred space intensified during 2018 as the family navigated the extraordinary events that would eventually draw them toward Clivilius. Fasting became more intensive, prayer more urgent, gatherings more focused. The living room that had hosted casual family evenings became site of serious spiritual seeking, as Jonathan and Evelyn worked to understand what was happening to their youngest daughter and what response their faith required.

The Children's Territory

Seven children sharing limited space developed complex negotiations around territory and privacy. The older children—Amelia, Benjamin, and eventually Nathaniel—occupied bedrooms configured for maximum efficiency, whilst younger children shared in arrangements that shifted as ages and needs evolved. The converted garage provided overflow accommodation, its lack of climate control acceptable for older teenagers whose tolerance exceeded their younger siblings' requirements.

Each child carved spaces within the shared environment that expressed individual identity. Amelia's corner of the bedroom she shared reflected her love of reading, books stacked in careful arrangement that younger siblings learned not to disturb. Nathaniel claimed the family computer as his particular domain, his technical competence establishing authority that transcended his middle-child position. Samuel's sports equipment accumulated in the garage, cricket bats and footballs marking his kinetic approach to life. The girls—Rebecca, Lydia, and Chloe—shared territory that evolved through ongoing negotiation, alliances and conflicts shifting according to the mysterious dynamics of sisterhood.

The backyard served as common territory where children could escape indoor crowding, its spaces large enough for cricket matches and imaginative play, its fruit trees providing climbing opportunities that parents technically discouraged but practically tolerated. Jonathan's vegetable gardens taught children about growth cycles and responsibility; each child at various points received assignment of beds to tend, with varying levels of success reflecting temperament more than instruction.

The home's limitations fostered relationships that might not have developed in more spacious circumstances. Children learned to coexist, to manage conflict without parental intervention, to find privacy through timing rather than physical separation. These skills served some better than others; the more introverted children, particularly, found the constant presence of siblings exhausting in ways they couldn't always articulate. But the close quarters also created bonds that would prove resilient across the fractures that 2018 and its aftermath would bring.

The 2018 Crisis

The events that would ultimately draw the Baker family toward Clivilius began manifesting in their Smithfield home during the latter months of 2018. Chloe, the youngest, had become involved in circumstances her parents understood incompletely—connections to the Smith family, particularly Charles Smith, that carried dimensions beyond ordinary teenage friendship. Something was happening that exceeded their categories, and the home became the primary site for their attempts to understand and respond.

Evelyn's response took the form of intensified spiritual practice. She initiated family fasts of unusual duration and seriousness, gathering the household for prayer sessions that stretched beyond comfortable lengths, seeking guidance through the channels her faith had always prescribed. The dining room table became a planning surface for spiritual logistics: schedules of fasting, prayer chains coordinated with trusted ward members, preparations for temple attendance where answers might emerge through sacred ritual.

Jonathan's response was characteristically more measured, though no less serious. He sought to understand through conversation and observation what was happening to his daughter and to their family, applying the methodical approach that served his engineering work to phenomena that resisted rational analysis. His workshop became a space for thinking as much as making, hours spent in physical activity whilst his mind worked problems that had no clear solutions.

The home absorbed the tension of this period, its rooms charged with urgency that children of various ages sensed without fully comprehending. Family dinners became occasions for careful conversation, parents weighing what to share and what to withhold, older children asking questions that couldn't be fully answered. The ordinary rhythms of household life continued—meals still required preparation, laundry still accumulated, homework still demanded attention—but everything now occurred within an atmosphere of heightened significance.

When Evelyn and Jonathan finally concluded that relocation to Clivilius represented their family's proper path, the announcement transformed the Smithfield home from permanent foundation to temporary accommodation. The house that had contained their entire married life became simply a place they were leaving, its significance shifting from present reality to past chapter. The months between decision and departure were filled with practical preparations—what to take, what to leave, how to explain to neighbours and ward members and employers decisions that exceeded ordinary understanding.

Departure and Legacy

The Baker family's departure from Smithfield in early 2019 proceeded according to the practical needs that such transitions require. Jonathan resigned from his environmental engineering position; Evelyn concluded her Relief Society responsibilities; the house was sold to a family whose ordinary suburban life would unfold in rooms that had witnessed the extraordinary. Seven children packed belongings according to their varied circumstances: some preparing to cross dimensions with their parents, others remaining in the familiar world they had always known.

Not all the Baker children made the journey. Amelia, married with a young child and another on the way, remained in Mount Barker with her husband Daniel. Benjamin, established in his accounting career, stayed in Adelaide. Lydia, midway through midwifery studies, continued her education on Earth. These decisions to remain created fractures in family unity that relocation could not heal, relationships that would now require maintenance across dimensional boundaries that ordinary communication methods couldn't reliably traverse.

Those who went—Jonathan and Evelyn, Nathaniel, Samuel, Rebecca, and Chloe—carried with them the formation that Smithfield had provided. The habits of faith, the patterns of family relationship, the expectations about how households function and communities support one another—all of this travelled with them to Bixbus and beyond, shaping how they would build new lives in a new world. The Smithfield house had done its work, providing the stable foundation from which transformation could launch.

For those who remained on Earth, the house's sale represented a different kind of loss. Amelia, particularly, struggled with the severance, returning to Smithfield in imagination during difficult moments, longing for the crowded childhood home whose very limitations now seemed precious. The lemon tree continued producing fruit for new owners who hadn't planted it; the workshop that had held Jonathan's tools stood empty of the presence that had given it meaning. These were ordinary losses, the kind that come with any family's dispersal, but they carried additional weight when the dispersal crossed boundaries between worlds.

The Jonathan and Evelyn Baker Family Residence remains occupied by subsequent owners who know nothing of its role in events that reshaped multiple families' trajectories. It is, to current observation, simply a modest brick home in a northern Adelaide suburb, distinguished by solar panels and mature fruit trees and the faint traces of modifications made by a previous owner with practical skills and environmental convictions. But for the Baker children scattered across two dimensions, it remains the centre from which their various paths diverged, the foundation that shaped them before circumstances required them to build foundations of their own.